Ethanol

A glimpse at the next 10 years in U.S. agriculture: Farmland prices will continue to rise, corn will cover more acreage and farmers will earn more profit. These are some of the predictions for the next decade in "Projections to 2016," a USDA report released last week at the department's annual outlook conference, held in Arlington, Va. For the nation as a whole, the average price of corn jumped 50 percent last year from $2 a bushel to $3, spurred by the production of ethanol as an alternative fuel for automobiles.

"Everything about ethanol is good, good, good," crows Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, echoing the conventional wisdom that corn-based ethanol will help us kick the oil habit, line the pockets of farmers and usher in a new era of guilt-free motoring. But despite the wishes of Iowans (and the candidates courting them), the "dot-corn bubble" is too good to be true. - Cameron Scott, Mother Jones

A tanker rig overturned and burst into flames yesterday evening on a curving interstate ramp over Baltimore's South Hanover Street, killing the driver and sending a burning stream of its load of ethanol into the street below, igniting a row of parked vehicles, authorities said. The wreckage burned for more than three hours as firefighters sprayed water and foam into the flames - with the driver's body still in the truck cab. His name and the company he worked for were not divulged last night, but the tanker - which was carrying 8,000 gallons of ethanol - was from a local trucking company, said Cpl. Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- One Republican presidential candidate assured his survival from Saturday's highly hyped Iowa straw poll by boycotting it.Sen. John McCain vacationed elsewhere while nine other White House hopefuls orated, groveled and spent scads of campaign money to persuade Iowa voters to back them in the state party's extravaganza, which produced bragging rights but not a single delegate for the GOP national convention next year.While the others scratched for national recognition from the small army of radio, television, newspaper and magazine reporters who covered the event, Senator McCain held true to his word expressed earlier this year that he would take part in no straw polls.

As federal regulations require more and more government-owned vehicles to run on alternative fuel, Maryland corn producers are trying to make sure ethanol isn't left out of the trend.A fleet of 14 Chevrolet Malibu sedans, redesigned by university students to run on ethanol-based fuel, made a pit stop at the Paul Baker Farm in Dickerson, in Montgomery County, yesterday. The cars and students were on their way to a national competition in Washington, and the Maryland Grain Producers Association was on hand to hail their efforts.

FORD MOTOR Co. announced last week that it plans to produce 250,000 models of its Taurus sedan, Ranger pickup truck and Windstar minivan that will run on either gasoline or ethanol.The new vehicles will be built over a four-year period starting in the fall of 1998. It produced 5,000 of what it calls flexible-fuel vehicles last year.Ford beat Chrysler Corp. off the line.Chrysler has scheduled a news conference to announce its own program to produce a line of vehicles powered by a blend of 85 percent alcohol made from corn and 15 percent gasoline on Tuesday at a hotel in Overland Park, Kan., the heart of the nation's corn belt.

The car of the future passed through Baltimore this week, and on the surface, anyway, it looked more like something you would expect to see running in the Daytona 500 than crossing the bridge into the 21st century.All you had to do was pop the hood of this multicolored four-door sedan decorated with corporate logos, the names of sponsors contributing to its construction and the number 24 painted on the door, to see that this was not an off-the-assembly-line 1991 Saturn.The four-liter stock engine was gone.

WASHINGTON -- In the tax legislation he submitted early this month, Rep. Bill Archer, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, proposed raising more than $4 billion in the next decade by trimming and eventually abolishing the federal tax subsidy for ethanol.Archer, a Texas Republican, even managed to win his committee's approval of the measure. But then it ran into snags.House Speaker Newt Gingrich spread the word that he would use his authority to have the changes in the tax treatment ofethanol deleted or at least significantly modified before the tax bill went before the full House of Representatives.

Twenty-five years after environmental regulators starting insisting that steel mills and chemical factories clean up the acrid smoke that belched from their smokestacks, regulators have started cracking down on a new set of air pollution culprits: bakeries.Federal and state environmental officials are drafting rules that will force large bakeries everywhere -- including at least three in Maryland -- to install "scrubbers" on their ovens' smokestack to remove the delicious, mouth-watering smell of baking bread.

WASHINGTON -- Archer Daniels Midland bills itself as the "supermarket to the world." But critics say the agricultural giant has been on its own shopping spree for political favors from the White House and Capitol Hill, buying access and influence with millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans and Democrats alike.Since 1987, ADM and its affiliates have given more than $1 million to the Republican Party. But ADM isn't partisan: Since 1991, with the rise of Bill Clinton and the Democrats, the company has given the Democratic Party nearly $500,000.

City officials say an unusually high concentration of ethanol in the city's gasoline supply contributed to the breakdown of more than 70 police cars over the weekend, most of which had been repaired and returned to service Tuesday. More than 200 police cars fueled up at a 24-hour, city-run gas pump by the Fallsway before cars started showing problems, and nearly one-third of the Police Department's patrol contingent was sidelined with engine trouble. Police doubled up in cars before activating a reserve and shifting administrative vehicles into service.

Shattuck won't benefit from deal Recent accounts in The Sun have suggested that Constellation Energy Chief Executive Officer Mayo Shattuck could be in line for a big personal payout from our historic transaction with Electricit? de France. The fact is he will get $0. Maryland gets the big payout. This exciting partnership between two nuclear energy leaders significantly increases the prospect of thousands of new, high-paying jobs and billions of dollars in investment to build and run a new nuclear unit at our Calvert Cliffs plant in southern Maryland.

Imagine having a virtually limitless supply of clean, renewable fuel to run our cars and trucks, a fuel produced from something as noxious and seemingly useless as pond scum. Fantastic as that may sound, it's no pipe dream to Algenol Biofuels. The three-year-old company aims to make ethanol with blue-green algae, by feeding it a steady diet of carbon dioxide and farm animal waste. A dark horse in a crowded field vying to develop a new generation of biofuels, Algenol is based in Florida, but its research arm is in Baltimore.

Maryland motorists could hardly believe their eyes the other day when a few gas stations around the state advertised fuel at $1.85 a gallon. Prices haven't been at that level since January of 2005, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic. But the fuel selling at $1.85 a gallon at five stations was different from that offered by the vast majority of other stations in the state. It contained only a small amount of imported oil. The primary ingredient was corn, grown by farmers throughout the state.

After an extremely worrisome start that fanned fears of famine and economic devastation, the nation's most crucial crop is on track for a bountiful harvest, the government said yesterday. The Department of Agriculture is forecasting the second-highest corn yield on record with production of 12.3 billion bushels, nearly 600 billion bushels more than it forecast earlier in the summer. "We dodged a bullet," said Bill Nelson, a grains analyst at Wachovia Corp. As cool weather in April and downpours in May gave way to extensive flooding in June, prospects seemed dim for corn, which in recent years has increased in importance as ethanol has become a government-mandated gasoline additive.

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency rejected yesterday a request to cut the quota for the use of ethanol in cars, concluding, for now, that the goal of reducing the nation's reliance on oil trumps any effect on food prices from making fuel from corn. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said that the mandate was "strengthening our nation's energy security and supporting American farming communities" and that the it was not causing "severe harm to the economy or the environment."

Gov. Martin O'Malley, whose administration has become increasingly focused on energy policy, announced plans yesterday to build ethanol pump stations around Maryland so the state's 1,200 flex-fuel vehicles can more easily fill up with the renewable fuel. The state has never been able to meet a goal set more than seven years ago under Gov. Parris N. Glendening's administration that flex-fuel vehicles in the state's fleet use alternative fuels half the time on average. State auditors have criticized the Maryland Energy Administration several times for falling short of that goal and making no formal timetable to meet it. The crux of the problem has been a lack of infrastructure.

For hundreds of Eastern Shore farmers and thousands of poultry plant workers there, ethanol is a dirty word these days. An energy bill passed by Congress last year requires that 9 billion gallons of ethanol be blended into gasoline in the 12 months beginning Sept. 1. It's part of an effort to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil and lower energy prices. But there's a problem: Much of the ethanol is being produced from corn that would have been used to feed chickens. Demand from ethanol producers is pushing the price of corn so high that it's squeezing the profits and production of Maryland poultry producers and the farmers who raise chickens for them.

WASHINGTON - The ethanol bandwagon has run off the road. Thanks to rising food prices, ethanol has lost its luster in Washington. Lawmakers reworked the recent farm bill to lower incentives for ethanol. The governor of Texas wants a waiver from federal requirements for more of the fuel in the coming years. And critics from around the world - from food companies to United Nations officials - say ethanol is to blame for more expensive food. In the middle sit Detroit's automakers, who have made ethanol the centerpiece of their environmental efforts - supporting ethanol mandates, building about 5 million flex-fuel vehicles so far, and pledging to make half their fleets capable of burning 85 percent ethanol fuel by 2012.

Those champagne corks heard on the Inner Harbor yesterday may well have been popping at Domino Sugar, where the high prices and corporate welfare are sweeter than anything that gets loaded on the trucks. Congress' veto-proof passage of the 2008 farm bill ensures that Domino's proprietor, the Fanjul family, and fat-cat farmers across the nation will keep wallowing in trade protections that disappeared decades ago for other industries. But while the bill is good for Domino, its 400 Baltimore jobs and a few agri-corporations, it hurts everybody else.